


Weddings; or, A Precise Agony

by lady_needless_litany



Category: Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical - Steinman
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 13:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17940401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_needless_litany/pseuds/lady_needless_litany
Summary: Ever since she could remember, Raven's parents had dragged her to their never-ending carousel of social events. Things hadn't changed, even when she'd gone to college. And she expected that the wedding - not hers, thankfully - would be no different.





	Weddings; or, A Precise Agony

“At least try to look excited, honey,” Sloane said as the car pulled up to the hotel. “I know you don’t want to be here, but it’s only today and tomorrow. We’re leaving the day after the wedding, by lunchtime. It won’t be that bad.”

“Sure,” Raven murmured to herself, quiet enough that her parents couldn’t hear her. “It’s only a whole day of my life wasted.”

In all fairness, it wasn’t quite a full day. More like forty-six hours, if you were being optimistic. Unable to help herself, she sighed. Forty-six hours of boredom, discomfort, and dealing her parents’ drunk friends. All because of a wedding.

As her father instructed their driver to deal with their luggage, Raven hauled herself out of the car, gravel crunching beneath her feet.

The hotel was really quite spectacular, in an old and stately way. It was a converted manor house, all light sandstone and sash windows, Georgian in style. For miles in either direction, it was surrounded by greeness.

It had a sense of tranquility that was destroyed by Raven stomping up the stairs to the entrance. The lobby alone was palatial and, as her mother remarked to her as they walked towards the concierge, it must have cost a fortune for the bride and groom and their families to rent the whole place out–they were even paying for the accomodation and food for all two hundred guests for both nights. Two hundred guests was, by the standards of her parents’ social circle, a small and intimate number; that didn’t change the fact that the cost of the whole event must have been astronomical.

Her father, controlling as ever, checked them in. In the meantime, Raven scanned the room, thankful that it was currently devoid of anyone that she knew. She realised that her luck wouldn’t hold in that respect–it was likely that she’d know a large percentage of the guests.

Once everything was squared away, her father handed her a key–a proper, honest-to-goodness key, not an electronic swipe card. She took it without question, desperately wanting to get some space to herself; an hour and a half with her parents in a confined space was enough to drive anyone insane. Hanging on the wall, behind the concierge’s counter, was a large analogue clock; as she excused herself, it was just hitting two o’clock.

She climbed the hotel’s central staircase to the first floor, checking room numbers until she found hers. Predictably, it was opposite her parents’ room. No need for her to stray far, in their eyes. Or something like that.

The room itself was more than alright. It was spacious and comfortable, with a good view across the front lawn and into the countryside beyond. Flopping onto the bed, she squeezed her eyes shut and huffed. _This is such a waste of time_ , she complained to herself. _I should be studying and trying to prepare for next semester._

Instead, she was at a hotel that was an hour’s drive from meaningful civilisation, at a wedding that she didn’t care about. Both of the couple were the children of her parents’ friends; her father’s company had invested in several joint ventures with the firm that the groom worked for. Given the type of people involved, the wedding was going to be gaudy and over-the-top, the kind of event that her parents had forced her to attend throughout her childhood. She’d hoped that she might be able to escape that once she was at college, technically an adult; alas, that was not the case. Her parents were still acting like she was a child, bound to their every whim.

The ceremony itself was the next day, but she didn’t even have that evening to herself. Before long, her mother was hammering on the door, insisting on a change of clothes and late afternoon drinks. Reluctantly, she obliged, not wanting to argue with her family so early on in proceedings.

She made it through the evening without major incident, took a long shower, then collapsed into bed and slept deeply.

She awoke to her phone’s obnoxiously loud ringing. It was a fumbling, bleary effort to get the device pressed to her ear. “What?” she mumbled.

“You need to get ready,” her mother’s voice, insistent and head-splitting at that time in the morning, instructed her.

“What? The ceremony doesn’t start until three o’clock.” Raven checked the time. “It’s only seven-thirty.”

“We arranged to have breakfast with the Fabians, remember? At eight o’clock.”

Vaguely, she did. It was a plan that her father and his friend had concocted sometime during the previous night. The Fabian family were old family friends; if her father could have had his way, Raven would have been married to their son, who was only a year younger than her. She had made it quite clear that she wasn’t interested, though her father still dropped heavy hints about it.

“Fine,” she replied, hanging up.

Against every desire in her body, she crawled out of bed and into the bathroom, dressing and dragging a brush through her hair. It was a haphazard process, but she was somewhat presentable by the end of it. She even made it downstairs and onto the veranda in time.

Breakfast was a passable affair, primarily consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Fabian quizzing her about college, especially given that their son would be enrolling later that year. The son in question wasn’t present; he’d been left at home. Raven would admit to her jealousy.

Their meal was cut short by Mrs. Fabian’s sudden panic about getting dressed and ready for the ceremony, which sent them all back to their hotel rooms, ostensibly to prepare.

Somehow, even with excessive amounts of time on her hands, Raven ended up behind schedule. She made it through the doors with only a few minutes to spare, still discreetly adjusting the bodice of her dress as she took a seat next to her parents.

The room itself was stunning–it was an orangery, all glass and wrought iron, decked from floor to ceiling with flowers. The flora lent a light perfume to the warm air. Rows of wooden chairs had been installed for the guests, divided by a velvet aisle.

It was beautiful. Truly, it was a shame that Raven wasn’t in the right state of mind to fully appreciate it all. In the true spirit of society weddings, everything had been exquisitely coordinated. The coloured belt on the bride’s dress matched the carpet that she walked on, as was the groom’s pocket square. The music was precisely timed with the bride’s arrival at the altar.

After that, Raven, quite unintentionally, stopped paying attention. They recited their vows, they signed on the dotted line, they kissed. Beyond that, she couldn’t recall much about the ceremony; her mind had always been active and she found it easy to slip into a daydream.

She was brought back to herself by a thunderous round of applause. By that point, the formalities had concluded.

The happy couple and the rest of the wedding party processed out, leaving the rest of them stretching and chatting, relieved that the ceremony was over. _Now the reception_ , Raven told herself. _The bit that’s marginally worse._ Almost as if they’d read her mind, a small flock of hotel staff appeared, ushering them out of the orangery. “The reception will be in the ballroom,” one man politely informed her. “Still on the ground floor. Just past the lobby.”

By some miracle, all two hundred of them successfully moved from one space to the other. The ballroom, like the orangery, was stunning, all parquet flooring and wooden panelling and candelabra, lined with French doors. There was a dance floor at the centre of the room, surrounded by twenty or so round tables for dinner.

The three of them had been honoured, placed on Table Three, alongside more distant aunts and uncles, as if they were members of the family. When they sat down, Raven was seated to her parents’ left-hand side. On her other side was an empty chair. It didn’t worry her, but she mused on it for a while. To be fair, it wasn’t like she had anything more productive to do–the rest of the table was making polite conversation, one that implicitly excluded her.

Waitstaff flitted around the room, pouring drinks. She was restricted to water, thanks to her father’s hawk-like gaze and the fact that he still treated her like she was a child. 

A member of staff, positioned in front of the double-doors that lead to the hotel’s foyer, rang a bell. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced. “The bride and groom.”

There was a round of applause, more polite than enthusiastic, as the couple crossed the threshold and took their seats. Once they had sat, Raven was hopeful that she’d be granted a reprieve from the pomp and ceremony, preferably in the form of food.

No such luck.

This, the best man decided, was the most opportune moment for his speech. And once he’d finished, it seemed that every other member of the wedding party had also written something to say.

The speeches seemed endless. They were boring, of course, despite their over-exuberance, but they also grated in a different way. They were telling, of their speakers and their audience; it was a jarring reminder of the opulent world of her parents, a world that she spurned now that she was older. Her parents paid her tuition fees and rent–which she was eternally glad for, seeing how others struggled with it–but beyond that, her life was identical to any other student’s. She studied, she worked, she socialised. She’d yet to find ‘her people’, as her mother termed it, but she wasn’t unhappy.

These people, though? On the one hand, she loathed them and their pettiness, their hypocrisy; on the other hand, she envied their absolute self-confidence and the way that they all seemed to _belong_. She’d never had that luxury, though it might have been the only one she’d ever lacked as a child.

The arrival of a plate of food halted her spiralling thoughts. She hadn’t even noticed that the speeches had ended. 

A second shock came in the form of a man, pulling out the chair next to her and settling down. He didn’t introduce himself to anyone and wasted no time in attacking the plate of food that had just been placed in front of him, which raised several raised eyebrows from their table companions, though none seemed overly surprised. If he was related to the couple, Raven supposed, then the rest of the table would be his family–perhaps he always acted strangely. On her part, she followed his example, tucking into her first course without further delay.

When her plate was empty, she sat back in her chair and threw a glance at the man next to her. Having finished his food as well, he was solely concentrated on fiddling with his napkin ring.

“Hi,” she tried, tentative.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers. “Hey,” he replied, sounding equally as unsure.

She found herself instantly drawn to the intensity of his expression. “I’m Raven. These are my parents.” A quick gesture towards them, which neither of them noticed, as engrossed in conversation as they were.

“My name’s Strat. These are my… relations.” At her quizzical, slightly perplexed, furrowed brow, he went on to elaborate. “Oh, I’m the bride’s cousin,” Strat drawled, by way of explanation. “I’m the black sheep of the family.”

_Oh. I know who you are._ While Raven would never have managed to match the face to the name, she’d heard of him before. He was a favourite gossip topic. Apparently he’d been quite the troublemaker when he was living at home, and not much had really changed when he’d moved out. “Right.”

“Life without risk is like thunder without lightning,” he continued, as if to explain, eyes flaring. “It’s just that most people don’t see that.”

“That was practically poetry.” Raven’s words were almost sarcastic, but something about the genuineness in his eyes took the meanness out of her voice. His words were odd. Yet, in a peculiar way, she thought she understood them.

At any rate, there was a flurry of action as their plates were cleared and their main course was delivered. They resorted to the routine of the first course–eating, not talking, not paying any attention to each other or anybody else.

It wasn’t until the mains were cleared and they were waiting for dessert that they spoke again. In the meantime, twilight fell beyond the French doors and the guests, helped along by large quantities of wine, grew steadily rowdier. Being sober made the situation all the more painful.

“You don’t seem very happy, Raven,” Strat said abruptly.

She pressed her lips together. “In all honesty,” she said, dropping her voice and casting a wary look at their tablemates. “I don’t want to be here. At all.”

He matched her volume, murmuring, “Why are you here, then?”

“I mean, my parents are paying for me to go to college, so I don’t have a lot of choice.”

He made a noise of acknowledgement, one that was neither positive nor negative. Somehow, it spurred her into explaining. “I hate this kind of thing. They’re so much effort and no-one ever really enjoys themselves. I can’t even have a drink when my Dad’s around, because he goes ballistic and tells me I’m being irresponsible,” she complained, still in a near-whisper. “So… I guess I’m just here for the cake.”

“Anyway,” she continued, now daring to raise her voice back to its usual volume. “This doesn’t seem like your kind of place, either.”

He threw his head back and laughed, almost manically. “It’s not. I’m just here to cause trouble. Stir up a few family feuds.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It can be.”

_Ching, ching, ching._

Strat’s words were harpooned by the insistent chink of a knife rapping smartly against a crystal champagne flute. The best man, again, this time announcing the cake. “Ladies and gentleman, family and friends…”

The cake-cutting was a cue for the guests to stand, mingle, chat. Everyone began to drift about the room with no apparent purpose. For Raven, it was a chance to escape her table, to make a beeline for the opposite side of the room. Strat stuck to her side like a thistle. She was both astonished and completely unsurprised.

They didn’t pass unnoticed. How could they? Strat was related to, and hated by, half of them, after all. They got an odd stare here, a whispered comment here: _what’s Falco’s daughter doing with that good-for-nothing louse?_ She’d only take a few steps before she realised that it wasn’t worth wasting energy on listening.

Nonetheless, they made it to the wall, turned, and faced the room. Strat waved down a waiter and got them two glasses of champagne; they raised them in an unspoken toast. Raven drank her first half of a glass in a single gulp. It was uncouth, for sure, but she felt that the situation called for it. For his part, Strat simply quirked an eyebrow and ordered her another glass.

As she was finishing her second, which she consumed at a much more civilised pace, Strat made a particularly witty comment about a man that was doing his best to drink the hotel’s wine cellar dry. She couldn’t help but burst into a fit of giggles. Clearly, she was loud; it made a few heads turn and she quickly stifled her laugher.

Across the room, she made eye contact with her father, who glowered at her behaviour; where she’d usually turn contrite, she instead shot back a jubilant grin. On the other hand, her mother, dare she say it, looked almost proud.

It was childish, she knew that. But there was something so thrilling about him, something so delicious about publically defying her parents, something so satisfying about scandalising everyone in the room.

See, Falco would usually love to see Raven interested in someone of Strat’s family, of their status and wealth. But Strat himself? Not a chance.

Just then, there was a commotion as a group of middle-aged musicians clattered into the room, equipment in tow. They’d probably call themselves a band, but Raven was doubtful; they looked like they were the kind of people who tortured their instruments, rather than played them. As they exchanged a sceptical look, Strat seemed to share her reservations.

Then she was struck by a thought. “I think I’ve seen these guys before,” Raven said in a tone of realisation. “They played at some event that we went to at the Fabian’s place. An anniversary, I guess.”

“And?”

“They were awful. They didn’t play anything under thirty years old. And they’ve got no stage presence.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father, finally unable to bear her behaviour, wending his way through the crowd towards them. She made a sound of disgust. “I hate weddings.”

Strat shot her a glance. “Let’s get out of here.”

In all her life, Raven had never heard a sentence that had made her so happy. Her heart, which had abruptly sunk, began to rise once more. “Definitely.”


End file.
